Director and actor Vasilis Papavasiliou always sparkles, to the point, with caustic humor ending in bitter laughter. During our meeting, we talked about his zodiac sign, national elections, actors, the civil war, his grandfather Pontius, Goethe. “Oh, dishonest Goethe, I respect him very much,” he says monologues, retelling the story of the consul Goethe, bursting into laughter. “Stamatis Fasoulis, Nikos Karatanos, Luis Buñuel and Schopenhauer were fish — and so was I, if that matters. The blessed Dimitris Horn once said to me, “My dear child, we belong to the same zodiac sign. You, me, your patriot, he meant Karamanlis, Makarios, Nureyev, but it is also Feofiloyannakos, the torturer of the junta, the commander of the ENA. Well, we’re the junkyard of the zodiac.” (Laughs). Thus began our conversation over a cup of coffee in one of the haunts in Pagration, where he lives and often visits.

“I am from the parents of the refugee generation. Both my father and my mother were not refugees of the first movement, but all my grandparents were from Pontus and Eastern Thrace. So my paternal grandfather played a crucial role in my development. He was very fond of writing and was a priest, archimandrite. He became archimandrite after the death of my grandmother. When I was 4-5 years old, I came to his room, and he read articles from the Helios encyclopedia to me, I listened, and he also gave me hazelnuts because he was smart sitting. He took me with him to the sanctuary, and when the six-winged ones came out, I also went out after them. When we approached the Beautiful Gate, my grandfather and I entered from behind. Some Pontians, who had a different relationship to the grandfather as Pontius – in a sense, they considered him a lord – say: “The little father is a layman, is he allowed to enter the sanctuary from the Beautiful Gate?” And the grandfather replied: “I wish that we, who officially enter, have the purity of his soul.”

“I have great respect for the burial of a person. The technologies that we have are space, this is the commercial application of space technology. All this real time, and the means of providing a speed that has reached the point of self-destruction, gives the human being a characteristic that we would call, as Kundera did, his unbearable lightness. Yes, it’s unbearable. I want to say that the place of suffering is always this earth. On this earth we still fall in love, we get sick, we fall, we have to get up. All this is alien to communication technologies. We have fellowship in terms of space and life in terms of earthly existence.

“I have heard about the abolition of government and bureaucracy as we know it, with the help of technology. But what does the abolition of publicity mean in essence? This means the abolition of time, which is the empirical time for the generations of Greeks who lived these 200 years. Have you thought about it? I had a friend in Serra whose father was in Asia Minor. The old man woke up from a nightmare and shouted: “Chees, cheats, cheats.” These are things that never end. The civil war ended after 100 years. No, it’s not true that the civil war ended in ’74, and it turned out that we experienced ghostly awakenings in the peaceful post-colonial period. Most recently, in 2015, we lived through this tragic farce, which took the form of a threat to leave the EU. I mean, behind the civil war of the 40s is the famous division of 1915, which continues.

You see, in 2023 everyone was hearing about the burial of the former king, but some fear was expressed for the return of the monarchy. Distance for me is the condition of any step below. Distance does not mean retirement or burial. Opposite. This means that I turn experience into knowledge and at the same time into a request for the future. The spiritual dimension of the Greek future is something that I don’t think anyone has thought about yet.

“It is the opposite of any form of the orthodox universe. This is what the Mexican Carlos Fuentes at the end of the 20th century said, and I think prophetically, that the battle in the next century will be between orthodoxy and baroque. I am doing a free translation of this term. For example, to be nominally a monotheist and essentially a polytheist. As Max Weber said, we live in an era of value polytheism. This polytheism of values ​​and the conflict with the monotheism of religions can be called the baroque version.

– All right, we’ll bring them. Is there anything else to do? We put them in the Acropolis Museum. Certainly. We are a small place, and – for better or for worse – we are recognized with a privilege that is connected with the history of the past and with our language. Can we do anything other than simplify our requests? Something more essential to our culture and language?

No, it’s not true that the civil war ended in ’74, and it turned out that we experienced ghostly awakenings in the peaceful post-colonial period.

The spiritual dimension of the Greek future is something that I don’t think anyone has thought about yet. Why until now we have been striving to get away from fiscal supervision, to win the investment stage, but what is all this for? In other words, we have to bring sculptures to dock them with the Parthenon, why, to show? Wouldn’t it be better to build two research centers of great value and radiation for the study of the ancient world, Greek and Roman, where almost everyone – from the Chinese to the Americans – will say that “there are these research centers in the former navel of the earth”; Can we see that the blood of today flows behind the balloons, their suffering, their need to live with their past?I heard the advertisement of the program, which sounds the slogan “Become part of the ancient world!”. Nice, nice.

– Why aren’t they released? The easily understood ones are omitted.

– The government has set up a commission of individuals to study the issue of a higher school of performing arts … Elections are coming to close the issue. We have buried seriousness in this place since birth. Now shall we resurrect her on the occasion of our theatrical passions? Listen, all theater, we’re moving between theater and theater. Let’s say squatters, as we recently saw them in the buildings of the National Theater, is a sacred role. Due to the pre-election period, nothing expires. We are at this stage and we have to make a decision. We are dependent on the electoral phenomenon, the electoral virus. I used to think that Greece could very well be a country of electoral tourism, as we say, religious, conference tourism. Hold elections every 6-7 months. And let the whole world come and watch how the elections are held.

– Firstly, this is a cult, the elections are not over today, and we are going to the next ones. Elections never end. The tragic accident at Tempe hints at this. This is a time of complete collapse, which resumes as a dissolution during this decade, assuming that in 2010 the period of prosperity and financial well-being that preceded it ended. And what about this decade after 2010? The decay resumes in the form of modernization as it continues, and has a tragic end, as in Tempi. I always thought that Greece is a joke with a double meaning of this term. Something funny and something original.

The comedian’s presence here is irresistible. In many ways, the country has a strong relationship with a phenomenon called absurdity. But let me remind you that even the lamp of democracy is related to the phenomenon of the comedian. These are phenomena that fundamentally characterize not only the Greek case, but also the phenomenon of democracy. And finally, as … the cradle of democracy, I must say that … God, if he is not a Greek, then he is definitely a philhellene.

– It is useful for me to communicate with young people. I started my second semester at the Faculty of Theater Studies at EKPA. Of course, I notice that we have an educational system that kills appetite.

– I read a lot, I work in the theater. But in any case, I can say, like Goethe, that I have woven my life with the lemmas of some women. Whom I have great respect for Goethe, because he is Goethe, and because at the age of 80 he sent a consul for himself to propose to a girl of 22 years old. These are good historical precedents that support a person who has entered the tunnel of old age. Ah, the dishonorable Goethe…